One insane story…

“(Reuters) – A Goldman Sachs technology analyst is under investigation by federal authorities for leaking inside information to hedge funds, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people close to the situation.

The newspaper named the analyst as Henry King and said his activities focused on the flow of information from Taiwan to U.S. investors about the supply chain for personal-computer parts makers from Taiwan.

In recent years, technology investors have increasingly used snippets of information about the production of computer parts as an indication of how demand in the United States for computers might be shifting, in turn affecting the results of U.S. technology companies, the Journal said.

It did not give further details on the investigation.”

Full article

“Global regulators have exposed flaws in banks’ internal controls that may have allowed traders to manipulate interest rates around the world, two people with knowledge of the probe said.

Investigators also have received e-mail evidence of potential collusion between firms setting the London interbank offered rate, said the people, who declined to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Regulators are focusing on a lack of so-called Chinese walls between traders and employees making interest-rate submissions on behalf of their banks, the people said. In some cases, the two groups may have sat close to each other, one person said.

Britain’s Financial Services Authority is probing whether banks’ proprietary-trading desks exploited information they had about the direction of Libor to trade interest-rate derivatives, potentially defrauding their firms’ counterparties, the people said. The investigation may lead to civil fines for the banks and criminal charges for the traders involved, the people said. No penalties are likely from the FSA before year-end, and the case hasn’t moved toward criminal charges, one person said.

“The entire story is very embarrassing for the banks,” said Tom Kirchmaier, a fellow in the financial-markets group at the London School of Economics. “I don’t know how they will eradicate this. The regulators have to rethink the way they set Libor.”

The rate, a benchmark for about $360 trillion of financial products worldwide, is derived from a survey of banks conducted daily on behalf of the British Bankers’ Association in London.

Full article

A recent survey of U.S. bankruptcy attorneys found a major jump in student loan debtors seeking their help, pointing the way to a possible mortgage-style debt crisis.

Now that state attorneys general across the country have reached a $25 billion deal with the major banks on their investigation into “robo-signing” and other foreclosure abuses, the next financial crisis may be on the horizon, one group is warning.

A survey and report released Tuesday by the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys found that 81 percent of the bankruptcy attorneys polled said that potential clients with student loan debt have increased “significantly” or “somewhat” in the past three to four years. Overall, 48 percent of the bankruptcy attorneys in the survey reported significant increases in such potential clients.

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Innocent till proven guilty does not apply anymore….

A TSA degenerate tells a female passenger she has a cute figure and then sends her through the nekkid scanner 3 times.

Tent cities are  reality for some once middle class Americans….

Your tax dollars at work….

via TMZ

Hugh Hefner‘s oldest son Marston Hefner was arrested last night after he allegedly attacked his Playmate of the Year girlfriend Claire Sinclair … TMZ has learned.

Law enforcement sources tell TMZ … cops were called to the pad Marston shares with Sinclair in Pasadena, CA after one of Sinclair’s family members called 911, claiming Marston had attacked her.

Cops arrived to the scene … and we’re told officers observed visible injuries on Sinclair’s body … including bruises and red marks.

Law enforcement sources tell TMZ … Marston admitted the two had gotten into an argument … but did not cop to striking Sinclair.

Sources tell us … Sinclair told cops Marston had punched her, kicked her in the stomach and then refused to let her leave the residence.  We’re told Sinclair called family members after the alleged attack … and her family called the cops.

After a brief investigation, Marston was arrested for misdemeanor domestic violence at around 11:15 PM … and hauled to a nearby police station where he was booked.

Marston was released on $20,000 bail a few hours later.

20-year-old Sinclair was named PMOY in 2011. She has been dating Marston on-and-off since August 2010.

5 Incredible Pictures

via @permabloom on Twitter

According to NBC affiliate in Los Angeles, attorney Ray Boucher has mapped out at least sixty locations of where suspected priests reside in California.

“Many if not all these priests have admitted to sexual abuse,” Boucher told NBC Los Angeles. “They live within a mile of 1,500 playgrounds, schools and daycare centers.”

One of the alleged victims, Dan Smith, graphically detailed his incident with a local priest when he was a child.

“He would rape me and then say this is what God’s love feels like,” Smith told Los Angeles NBC.

Boucher represents over 500 suspected victims suing the Los Angeles Archdiocese for sexual molestation. The LA Archdiocese reached a $660 million settlement with most of the victims in 2007.

But the archdiocese is being accused of a cover up by letting priests leave the country or hide in rehab until the legal deadline for prosecution runs out.

SOURCE 

By Myles Miller

Medical insurance premiums in the United States are on the rise, the chief architect of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul has told The Daily Caller.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Jonathan Gruber, who also devised former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s statewide health care reforms, is backtracking on an analysis he provided the White House in support of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, informing officials in three states that the price of insurance premiums will dramatically increase under the reforms.

In an email to The Daily Caller, Gruber framed this new reality in terms of the same human self-interest that some conservatives had warned in 2010 would ultimately rule the marketplace.

“The market was so discriminatory,” Gruber told TheDC, “that only the healthy bought non-group insurance and the sick just stayed [uninsured].”

“It is true that even after tax credits some individuals are ‘losers,’” he conceded, “in that they pay more than before [Obama’s] reform.”

Gruber, whom the Obama administration hired to provide an independent analysis of reforms, was widely criticized for failing to disclose the conflict of interest created by $392,600 in no-bid contracts the Department of Health and Human Services awarded him while he was advising the president’s policy advisers.

Gruber also received $566,310 during 2008 and 2009 from the National Institutes of Health to conduct a study on the Medicare Part D plan.

In 2011, officials in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Colorado ordered reports from Gruber which offer a drastically different portrait in 2012 from the one Obama painted just 17 months ago.

“As a consequence of the Affordable Care Act,” the president said in September 2010, ”premiums are going to be lower than they would be otherwise; health care costs overall are going to be lower than they would be otherwise.”

Gruber’s new reports are in direct contrast Obama’s words — and with claims Gruber himself made in 2009. Then, the economics professor said that based on figures provided by the independent Congressional Budget Office, “[health care] reform will significantly reduce, not increase, non-group premiums.”

During his presentation to Wisconsin officials in August 2011, Gruber revealed that while about 57 percent of those who get their insurance through the individual market will benefit in one way or another from the law’s subsides, an even larger majority of the individual market will end up paying drastically more overall.

“After the application of tax subsidies, 59 percent of the individual market will experience an average premium increase of 31 percent,” Gruber reported.

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece’s future in the euro grew increasingly precarious Friday as violence erupted on the streets of Athens during a general strike and five politicians resigned from the government after European leaders demanded deeper spending cuts.

Hours after Greece claimed it had reached an agreement among its squabbling party leaders on new cutbacks, European officials dashed any hopes that the country was close to getting its bailout. Finance ministers said more austerity needs to be agreed and set a deadline for the middle of next week.

If Greece’s government fails to meet Europe’s demands, the debt-ridden country faces a chaotic debt default next month that would send shockwaves around the world economy and could doom a generation of Greeks to even deeper hardship.

If it does deliver those demands, Europe has committed to give it a euro130 billion ($172 billion) lifeline that would at least postpone Greece’s day of reckoning.

“No disbursement without implementation,” Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg premier who also chairs the eurozone’s finance ministers’ meetings, said Thursday after they declined to fully back the deal Greek leaders had agreed.

In a game of musical chairs transparency is shunned and un-American behavior continues to favor the in crowd…

Never heard of this oil spill and that is saying something after 7 years….

[toytube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxy-afPdM-E 450 300]

Kiev, Ukraine (CNN) — Suffering in the grip of a brutal winter where temperatures have not risen above freezing in nearly a month, Ukraine has seen a wave of deaths related to the cold, and the country’s ambulance service is inundated with calls for help.

On one recent night, emergency services raced through the streets of the capital, Kiev, in response to a call about a homeless man passed out in the freezing weather.

The man got drunk and either fell asleep or dropped unconscious outside, putting him at risk of frostbite.

Vladimir Poddubniy, a passerby, found him, brought him indoors and called for an ambulance.

Shelters overwhelmed in Poland When paramedics arrived, they found the homeless man, who gave his name simply as Kostya, squatting drunk on the floor. His hand was so swollen, he could barely hold his cigarette.

Poddubniy said the man was freezing to death, so he brought him inside.

“I felt sorry for him. But I also didn’t want to find a body in the morning,” Poddubniy said.